The capital and other Ukrainian cities were hit on Tuesday by new Russian strikes, the first since mid-October, a few days after a humiliating retreat of Russian forces in the south of the country and in the middle of the G20 summit in Indonesia.
Air defense warning sirens sounded across Ukraine shortly before 3:30 p.m. local time. A few minutes later, explosions were heard in kyiv, Lviv (west) and Kharkiv (northeast).
As a result of the shelling, electricity was cut in several regions of the country, Ukrainian authorities said.
“Attack on the capital: according to preliminary information, two residential buildings were hit in the Pechersk district. Several missiles were shot down by the air defense over kyiv,” mayor Vitali Klitschko said shortly after on Telegram.
A Ukrainian presidential administration official released a video showing a five-story building in flames.
Other cities have been targeted elsewhere in the country.
In the northeast, “missile attack against the Industrialniï district in Kharkiv”, indicated on Telegram Igor Terekhov, mayor of the second city of Ukraine. And in the west, “explosions are heard in Lviv. Everyone stay safe! “, Urged on Telegram his counterpart from Lviv, Andriï Sadovy, who specified that” part of the city (was) without electricity “.
No results were immediately made public.
The previous strikes that targeted the Ukrainian capital date back to October 10 and 17, and had above all targeted, as elsewhere in the country, Ukrainian energy infrastructure, in order to deprive the population of electricity at the approach of winter.
At the time, Moscow justified these “massive” strikes by the partial destruction of the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
This time, the strikes targeted kyiv four days after the humiliating withdrawal of Russian forces from the northern Kherson region, including its eponymous capital, after nearly nine months of occupation.
New Russian retreat
The Kremlin had to resolve to do so because of a Ukrainian counter-offensive galvanized by the weapons delivered by the West. He had already had to withdraw from the north of the country in the spring, then from the northeast in September.
Sign of its difficulties on the ground, the occupation authorities in the region of Kherson, which Moscow claims the annexation, had to abandon a new city, Nova Kakhovka, accusing the forces of kyiv of bombarding it.
This city is located on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper, where the Russian forces had withdrawn last week because they could not hold the right (western) bank.
The Russian occupation does not indicate however if the Russian army remains deployed in the city or if it also withdraws.
After the November 11 Russian withdrawal from the right bank of the Dnieper, “Nova Kakhovka came under direct fire from heavy artillery and mortars of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the occupation administration said.
“Life in the city has become dangerous,” she added, saying “thousands” of residents had left.
This city is located near the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, captured by the Russians at the start of their offensive against Ukraine in late February and of great importance for supplying water to the Crimean peninsula, located further south.
Built in 1956, during the Soviet period, this hydroelectric dam sends water into the North Crimean Canal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has in the past accused Moscow forces of having “undermined” the dam and power plant units, adding that if the structure exploded, “more than 80 localities” would be flooded.
According to kyiv, the destruction of this infrastructure would also have an impact on the water supply of the whole of southern Ukraine and could affect the cooling of the reactors of the nuclear power plant of Zaporijjia, the largest in Europe, which draws its water in the dam’s 18 million cubic meter artificial lake.
Moscow’s intransigence at the G20
According to the head of the Russian occupation in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, the hydroelectric dam “no longer produces electricity today because there is no need for it”.
On the diplomatic front, the leaders of many G20 countries, which brings together the biggest economic powers on the planet, have tried to increase pressure on Russia to end its war.
But Moscow, which had sent its head of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov there to Indonesia, Russian President Vladimir Putin not having wanted to make the trip, gave no sign of wanting to stop its attacks.
The Russian minister accused Ukraine of preventing the holding of peace negotiations by demanding that Russian troops leave its territory.
“All the problems come from the Ukrainian side which categorically refuses negotiations and puts forward manifestly unrealistic demands,” he lamented.